Enchanted August (12 page)

The Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap tingled on his scalp.

Yes, Lottie could have warned him that Caroline and Old Blazer prowled the little rocky beach in front of the house. She could have kept guard and then introduced him to Caroline when the time was absolutely right so Caroline would have (a) wanted to screw him and (b) snapped him up to be part of her legal team. But Lottie had done neither.

If Caroline wanted to add him to her legal team, she still could. Clothed or unclothed.

He laughed and rinsed the last of the gritty sand off his toes. He had been at this “cottage” for less than an hour and he already felt like a million dollars. “I feel like a billion dollars,” he said to Lottie as he bounded into their little room downstairs. She was reaching up to a high shelf above the little daybed for a fleece for Ethan and a little skin showed. He grabbed her around the waist and gave her a tight and provocative hug from behind. She fit herself into his embrace.

Lottie turned around. He kissed her mouth and she kissed him back.

“I missed you,” he said into her hair.

T
he sound of buzz saws started at eight a.m. on Saturday, their second Saturday at Hopewell. Rose was sitting at the ancient table in the kitchen, reading a
Down East
magazine from July 2006. She and Lottie had decided last night they wouldn't go into the Harbor to get groceries: the Harbor on the weekends was strictly for tourists. She had planned a morning of looking out on the water and an afternoon reading the early childhood books she'd lugged here with her. She hadn't even cracked one open yet. But now this noise.

“What is going on?” said Caroline. She rarely emerged before ten o'clock. The saw was making her tense; Rose could see it in her face. Even so, every expression she had was an adorable expression, Rose thought. Even when she looked upset she looked adorably upset. Seeing her do anything was like watching a scene in a movie.

Caroline was an awfully good actress in the one film Rose had seen her in. The long, meandering one that people thought was improvised but was actually tightly scripted. She'd be good as the female sidekick in the movie of Fred's new book. She'd class up the act. “I don't know. I hope it stops soon, though.” Another saw started up. “It's eight o'clock in the morning. On a Saturday.”

“
Et in Arcadia ego
,” said Caroline.

“Nicely put,” said Rose.

“It was my one line in that Woody Allen movie when I was a kid.”

“That was you?”

“That was me.”

“Woody Allen always picks Oscar winners. Diane Keaton. Cate Blanchett.” As soon as she said the words, she wanted the earth to swallow her.

“Thanks,” said Caroline. Her long eyelashes lowered.

“Oh God, I'm so sorry.” Very bad gaffe, Rose! Save it somehow. “You were robbed.” She must have heard that a million times before. Say something honest. “It must have been excruciating. I can't even imagine.”

“No, you can't,” Caroline said. She was being honest too.

“I haven't seen you in everything but you always light up the screen when you're on. And you've been doing it a really long time.”

“A really long time.” Caroline looked in the fridge, took out nothing. “That Woody Allen was my fifth movie. Or maybe the seventh? I can't remember. We'd have to IMDb it.”

“Everything's online now.” There'll be no ephemera when this generation fades away, Rose thought. Historians will be so much the poorer. The saws roared again. “That noise is horrendous.”

“Why are they cutting down trees, anyway?” Caroline asked. “The trees make the place. I love how you can barely see the cottages, even when they're next door to each other. I could spend a lifetime up here. Away.” A noisy, bright orange vehicle clattered past the kitchen window. Even Beverly could have identified the color. “What is this about? We're supposed to be on a tranquil Maine island and suddenly we're in a construction site.”

Lottie wandered sleepily onto the porch. She was wearing the Oxford cloth shirt Jon had driven up in. Swamped by the shirt, she looked even more like a child than usual. She had Robert's cottage guide in her hands. “It's the work party. That's what all the noise is. ‘Do not be alarmed by the noise and activity that will begin early in the morning on the second Saturday in August.' That is so Robert,” she said
.
“I haven't even met him and I know that is so Robert. ‘It is the annual all-island work party. You need not join in, though you will be welcome. The tasks are generally divided by gender
—
'”

“Very Little Lost Island,” said Rose.

The violent whines of the chain saws sounded again. “I hope they're only taking down the dead ones,” said Caroline.

“Islanders?”

“Trees.”

“Jon would love to traipse around clearing brush,” said Lottie. “Super manly. I don't think he has anything like work boots, though.”

“There are work boots in the hall, where the jackets are,” said Caroline. “What do the women do?”

Lottie continued: “‘. . . with the men clearing brush, and scraping and painting the railings of the dock, the boardwalks, et al. The women minister to the public spaces: the assembly room, the library, the teahouse.' He wrote in a newer note, though, in pencil: ‘This has changed in recent years.'”

“Thank God,” said Rose.

“Has anyone even seen the assembly room?” Lottie asked.

“It's where the kids play at night,” Caroline said. “Up at the top of the island.”

“I might go over to the library,” said Rose. “I'll volunteer there and see if they'll take me, a humble renter. I think it's on the east side, over by the tearoom, so maybe this awful chain saw noise will not reach that far.”

“I may go too.” Caroline's voice dropped half an octave. “If it's all right with you.”

“I'd love it,” said Rose. She actually would.

“I'll keep Beverly away from the painters on the dock,” said Lottie. “Or who knows what colors he'd choose.”

“He's a good soul,” said Caroline. “Even if he is color-blind.”

They heard heavy footsteps in the hall. Lottie grinned. “Jon. He clomps.”

“It's sort of okay to have another man here,” said Caroline. Rose was still adjusting. The cottage was big, but the four of them had just learned how to get along. Now with Lottie's husband there Rose felt less ownership. It made her miss Fred more than she already did.

“Plus Ethan!” Lottie said. “He slept through the night last night. All night. In his own bed. He was still asleep when I woke up.”

Rose's heart hurt. Lottie gave her a hug. “Don't say it, Lottie,” said Rose. “I know you see them here.”

“What is up with all this noise?” Jon walked into the kitchen already dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, but looking as sleepy as Lottie. They clearly did not get much rest last night. “Good morning.”

“Buzz saws,” said Rose.

“Sounds more like chain saws,” said Jon.

“It's the all-island work party. You can tramp around in the woods clearing brush.”

“Not my idea of vacation. Is there any coffee?” Jon asked.

Lottie explained the Beverly situation with the coffeepot. “So we're doing pour overs. Or drinking instant.”

“I'm not drinking instant,” said Jon. “We've got to be able to find a decent coffeemaker. We could go to the mainland today, Lottie, and buy a coffeemaker and do Maine things.”

The chain saws stopped but there was a new sound. Less revving. More steady. Loud.

“Is that a helicopter?” Caroline asked. She looked pale.

“No, that's just the chain saws,” said Jon. “When they're not sawing they sound like helicopters.”

“I wouldn't mind escaping the work party,” said Lottie. “I'm feeling more Wilkes-Mellishy than islandy today. If we drive over to West Dorset we can play minigolf and get soft ice cream and avoid the crowd in the Harbor. I can't believe Ethan is sleeping through all this.” She looked over at Jon, gathered her hair up into a wild loose bun, and shook it out again.

“Let's go check up on him,” said Jon. Good for Lottie. Good for them both.

“I can't stay here,” said Caroline. “Rose, let's go.”

“Could you hold on for a moment while I brush my teeth?” she asked.

“I think so. I'll leave a note for Beverly.”

Rose used the little sink in her bathroom. These are the taps that everyone wants in Brooklyn, she thought. They looked so jolly, like jacks:
COLD
and
WARM
, they read. No false promises.

Rose went back out to the porch and found Caroline already at the foot of the stairs.

“Can we take this path?” she asked. “There's no boardwalk but I think it goes to the top of the island and then down to the other side.”

Caroline was right—there was a little path in the woods that Rose hadn't noticed. It took them through a heavily wooded stretch of the island. As they walked farther from the cottage, the noise diminished. Caroline's shoulders looked less tense. She's so young, really, Rose thought. Yet she's done so much, accomplished so much. She must work incredibly hard.

A mourning dove sang its soft song. Once. Twice. “You must work incredibly hard,” Rose said.

“I do. I work incredibly hard.”

“Since you were a baby.”

“Since I was a baby.”

“Did you like it?”

A grasshopper bounded across the path. Rose had no idea they could jump such a distance. I've got to show Ben one of those guys, she thought. We could rent another cottage some year if Robert won't have us back next year. I wonder what Lottie sees about next summer.

“I don't remember the early stuff.” Caroline's voice was freighted with emotion, always. Rose didn't know when to trust it and when not. Now seemed like a time to trust it.

“The
National Velvet
remake was the first thing I really recall. I liked my trailer. I shared it with my mother. She was the one who kept getting the roles for me.”

“Did you want them?”

Caroline didn't say anything for a while. The walk was steeply uphill here, so maybe she didn't want Rose to see that it was an effort. Or maybe she just didn't want to talk.

“You don't read very deep on the websites, do you?”

“I don't read them much at all,” said Rose.

“The eminent Dester family is congenitally weak, like the House of Usher. I did that as an HBO special, in case you're wondering. Every once in a while, we fall.”

“I thought you were all rock solid. Except . . .” Rose recalled hearing stories of a Dester uncle. Embezzlement? Bigamy?

“Darling Dad basically snorted a fortune up his nose in the eighties. So my job was to build it up again. I had the face for it. Mother kept all the accounts. Even so, beloved Pa ran through it fast. That's why we moved around so much when I was little. Everywhere we went, we kept up appearances till we couldn't anymore. Wait—is that Beverly's cat?”

Rose stopped to listen to what sounded like a baby crying. “Beverly has a cat?”

“He's putting water and scraps out on the porch every night for a cat he thinks he heard. Not here, though; down on the point.”

“I think that may be a seagull,” said Rose. “Not a cat. Or a baby. He's an odd one, Beverly. I was so afraid of him the first week.”

“Poor Beverly! He's just a teddy bear.”

They were at the very top of the island now. Rose thought she had exhausted all the views on Little Lost but this was another stunner.

“Just when you think the whole place couldn't get any more picturesque,” said Caroline. “What's going on with the stones here?”

There was a small tower of stones at the summit of the hill. The base was made of larger stones, and the pile got progressively narrower and more precarious as it got higher.

“I think that must be a cairn,” said Rose.

“A cairn is what, exactly?”

“It's a pile of stones that people put together. To mark something significant. This is the highest point on the island and the cairn makes it higher.”

“This island is the high point of my year,” said Caroline. “It's been a bad year, as you so delicately pointed out this morning.”

“I'm sorry—”

“I'm joking. Sort of. Do you make a wish with your cairn stone?”

Rose hadn't heard of making a wish with a stone. “Why not?” she said.

She watched as Caroline picked up a small flat smooth stone. She rubbed it once, steadied it on the top of the pile, and closed her eyes.

When she opened them again, she smiled. “I wish I wish my wish comes true,” she said. Then she turned down another path and waved to Rose as she left. “I'll head this way now,” she said. “See you at supper.”

You'll get your Oscar yet, Rose thought.

She consulted her map and found her way down to the library. There was a whole cluster of cottages on this side of the island she hadn't seen yet. These were the ones Lottie found that first day and couldn't find again, even with her keen sense of direction.

The path hugged the shore for a while and then led into an open field. A few more fairy houses dotted the path. The fairies were probably at a work party of their own. In the distance she could see a building that looked less like a cottage and more like a public building.
LITTLE LOST LIBRARY
, read the sign, without irony. She climbed the wide steps and stood under the portico for a few moments. This was not like the library in the Harbor, she could tell already. It was built of stone, not wood. And she was quite sure that when she went inside she'd find that no one had changed a pebble since the ribbon was cut in 1887, the date that was carved on the cornerstone.

The day was beautiful, so Rose imagined that most of the work party would be working out of doors. She was right: a sign on the front door read,
AT
WORK PARTY. COME BAC
K LATER
.

She pushed open the door. There was a pile of waterlogged books on a long narrow table that had been covered with a blue tarp.
FOR SORTING
, read the sign. So Rose began.